Jeremy Harrison

[Aboriginal Affairs, October 27th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, the Minister of Indian Affairs knew all about the drinking water situation in Kashechewan eight weeks ago. On August 19, reserve representatives personally gave the minister documents stating that “sewage is continually being exhausted into the source of the community's water supply. This situation must be addressed immediately”.

This morning at the aboriginal affairs committee, Chief Friday testified that the Indian affairs minister received this information and has done nothing for the past eight weeks. When will this minister resign?

[Aboriginal Veterans, October 27th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, I rise today with respect and honour for our aboriginal war veterans and to offer my best wishes to the delegation of aboriginal veterans, youth and spiritual leaders travelling in pilgrimage to the battlefields of Europe.

Last year the House passed my private member's motion calling on the government to recognize and fairly compensate the brave sacrifices of our aboriginal veterans. It is the will of the House, and I believe it is the will of all Canadians, to embrace and repay the contributions of these veterans with a spirit of respect and gratitude.

Regretfully, the Liberal government has failed the legacy of these brave warriors. The entire cabinet voted against my proposal for equal treatment of aboriginal war veterans. The government neglected to invite the Aboriginal Veterans Association to the lying in state of Smokey Smith and it has refused repeated pleas to remove negative depictions of aboriginal veterans from the Canadian War Museum.

The Liberal government should act now, in accordance with the will of the House, to officially recognize and fairly compensate these brave aboriginal warriors who sacrificed so much to leave us a legacy of freedom.

[Criminal Code, October 18th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, the presentation by the member for Vegreville—Wainwright was very well done. The member is a strong advocate for justice issues and does a very good job.

Perhaps the member would comment on what we have seen to be a pattern of government behaviour in its opposition to mandatory minimums, its opposition to positive justice measures. The week before last, the government voted against changing the age of consent from 14 to 16. This is unbelievable. The Minister of Justice said he did not want to criminalize puppy love. I do not know how there can be puppy love between a 14 year old and a 50 year old. There has been a pattern of behaviour on the part of the government in opposition to strong justice measures.

[First Nations Oil and Gas and Moneys Management Act, October 6th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to point out as well the incredible work that the member for Calgary Centre-North has done as the senior critic for aboriginal affairs and northern development for first nations in this country. He has been an incredible advocate and is incredibly knowledgeable on this file.

He has worked very hard, travelling the country from one end to the other, meeting with first nations' leaders, chiefs, councillors and individuals living on reserves. I think he has done an outstanding job. He has put together an incredible policy document that was accepted by our convention. It was very forward looking, I think much more so than anything we have seen from the government on this file.

With regard to how this bill will affect my riding, the potential is there for it to have a significant impact down the road in the context of the latent oil and gas resources that currently exist in northern Saskatchewan and being developed at some point. I would really like to see those resources developed by first nations.

Too often in northern Saskatchewan we see the incredible natural resource wealth leaving northern Saskatchewan with not a lot of the value remaining in northern Saskatchewan. Quite frankly, I think that is reflected in the statistics. Northern Saskatchewan has the poorest riding in the entire country. It is 308th out of 308. The federal government has largely ignored the interests of northern Saskatchewan and that is reflected in the fact that we have reserves and first nations that are some of the poorest in the country.

That would change under a Conservative government. We have given a commitment. I actually introduced today a motion that would extend the resources of the northern strategy to include northern Saskatchewan and northern Manitoba. This would mean that over four years $120 million additional dollars would be available to northern Saskatchewan and northern Manitoba that currently do not exist in what are two of the poorest regions of the entire country.

The Conservative Party has a very forward looking view for first nations and a positive outlook as it moves forward with a plan to actually transfer powers currently exercised by the federal government to have self-government on reserves for first nations. This is a positive thing and our vision is far better than that of the government.

[First Nations Oil and Gas and Moneys Management Act, October 6th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, my colleague from Regina—Lumsden—Lake Centre made a very good presentation on this bill.

It is a real pleasure for me to rise on behalf of my constituents of Desnethé—Missinippi—Churchill River, in northern Saskatchewan, to speak on Bill C-54, the first nations oil and gas and moneys management act, a bill which we are supportive of and which we feel moves in the right direction.

The purpose of this bill is to enable three first nations, the White Bear, the Blood tribe and the Siksika, to assume the direct management and regulation of their oil and gas resource moneys, currently administered on their behalf by Indian Oil and Gas Canada. The bill would will permit other first nations to similarly access their oil and gas resources and moneys provided they meet the legislative conditions.

These three first nations have entered into a series of agreements with the Government of Canada for the co-management of oil and gas in their reserve lands. Their pilot project began in 1994 and resulted from a proposal from the Indian Resource Council to transfer full management and control from IOGC to first nations by 2005. The pilot project was a success. Legislation is now required and we now have Bill C-54.

The bill would require an affirmative vote by any first nation, a referendum of all eligible voters, and approval by “a majority of the majority” would be required, a provision that I think is quite worthwhile and will reflect well in first nations across the country.

The bill would ensure that the federal government would not be liable “in respect of the exercise of powers by a first nation in relation to oil and gas exploration or exploitation” or “for the payment of the management of those moneys” extracted from the consolidated revenue fund. The federal government would also not be liable “in respect of any damage occasioned by oil and gas exploration or exploitation” under this bill.

Accountability measures would occur in the form of an annual preparation of financial statements in accordance with the generally accepted accounting principles of the Canadian Institute of Chartered Accountants, as well as an annual audit of the financial statements in accordance with the generally accepted auditing standards.

One thing I would like to emphasize is the collaborative nature of the discussions, the legislation and the aboriginal affairs and northern development committee, of which I am the vice-chair. We have had that collaboration in this Parliament. Each party has worked together, I think, and has worked for what we see as being the benefit of first nations right across the country.

I think everybody recognizes that the current state of affairs has to change and that our first nations deserve better. They deserve better than the Indian Act. They deserve better than the paternalistic attitude that we have seen from Ottawa for the past 150 years on this file.

We need self-government. We need our first nations, our aboriginal peoples, to be running their own affairs rather than having their affairs run from Ottawa by bureaucrats in office towers. This is something that we no longer want to see happening. In my constituency, where I have nearly 30 first nations and over 100 separate reserves, this is the attitude that I see and hear. Chiefs, councillors and individuals living on reserve no longer want to have their lives run from Ottawa. They do not want to have rules dictated to them by Ottawa with very little input from them, from their people. That is not the way that we want to go.

One of the real benefits or positives about this bill is that we would have power resources, moneys, that are now going to be more directly controlled by the first nations that are responsible for them. I think that is a positive thing.

Regarding the self-government file, we are very supportive of moves in this direction. I think that our critic, the member for Calgary Centre-North, has laid out a very forward-looking document. Our party voted on it and it is a policy of this party, a very forward-looking statement on what we see as the future of self-government, with first nations managing their own affairs and running their own lives. I think this is the direction we have to move in.

Just recently, the member for Calgary Centre-North and I met with the tribal chief, Richard Gladue, and also with a number of other chiefs and senior officials from the Meadow Lake Tribal Council, which is based in my hometown of Meadow Lake in my riding. The Meadow Lake Tribal Council is blazing the path in negotiating a self-government agreement, not just for an individual first nation but for an entire tribal council of nine first nations. It is going to be the first agreement of its kind. My understanding is that the handshake agreement will be completed fairly quickly and that ratification will be moving forward in the fairly near future, meaning within eight months to a year.

This is an agreement that has been many, many years in the making. Negotiations have gone on for over a decade, I believe. I think it is a positive step. It is a direction that we want to move in, a direction that the Conservative Party supports. I have seen the presentation from the representatives and chief of the Meadow Lake Tribal Council a number of times. It is a very positive thing and a direction that we do want to go in. We have made it clear that we are supportive of this initiative.

Another positive portion of this bill is the voluntary nature of this legislation, which we have seen in prior acts, whereby first nations can decide, after a referendum from their membership consulting with each member of the first nation, whether they want to be part of this, whether it be this legislation or the previous bill that was brought forward, the financial management act. This is a trend we have seen developing, largely because of mistakes made by previous governments whereby legislation was forced upon first nations whether they wanted it or not. It is a trend that we have seen developing over the last five or six years and I think it is a positive trend.

Of course we cannot go down this path for all government legislation. No one would be supportive of having the Criminal Code apply only if one decides to opt in, but for bills such as this, which directly affect first nations in varying stages of development, I think this is the direction that we will be moving toward in the future.

As an example, a Conservative Party government would introduce a first nations land ownership act, whereby land would actually be transferred to and owned by the first nation in question, rather than having the current situation in which the land is owned by the federal government, with all that comes along with the land being owned by the federal government, including an immense bureaucracy in regard to whether land can be used in certain ways by first nations people.

That is something we would bring forward, whereby first nations would actually own their own land. I think a lot of people find it astonishing that right now first nations do not own their own land, that individuals on reserve, for instance, cannot own their houses. The houses ultimately are owned by the Government of Canada. We want to move in the direction where individuals can actually have access to owning their own homes, to things that other Canadians take for granted. It is astounding that the only place in Canada where someone is not allowed to own property and a home is on reserve. If we want to talk about paternalism, this is an example of it: the government owns everything. It is astounding.

The bill could have a fairly significant impact on my constituency in northern Saskatchewan, an area where the tar sands actually extend into northern Saskatchewan. There is currently not a lot of development going on there, as development now is focused on the Fort McMurray area, of course, but eventually there will be development of the tar sands in northern Saskatchewan as well as northern Alberta. This will have an impact, because much of the area is covered by land that could potentially be owned by first nations, as some of it is right now. I think it is a positive sign that we are moving in this direction and allowing those first nations the possibility of owning their resources if the oil and gas in that area are developed.

I have another example of how it will affect my riding. We have had a long struggle to build a road connecting the Fort McMurray area to Saskatchewan. The people of La Loche actually physically built the road from La Loche on the Saskatchewan side to the border and the road stopped there. It stopped at the border. They call it the road to nowhere.

Forty kilometres had to be built from the Alberta side to connect northern Saskatchewan to northern Alberta and we finally did it after incredible effort. I made it my number one priority as a member of Parliament to have this road completed. We finally got an announcement and the road will be completed. That is positive and something that could very well lead toward this act being applicable in northern Saskatchewan.

[First Nations Oil and Gas and Moneys Management Act, October 6th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the comments from the parliamentary secretary with regard to the fact that all parties in the House have been supportive of first nations. We have worked in this Parliament, collaboratively. We have worked together to advance the interests of first nations. This bill is an example of that, a bill supported by all parties in the House, much like previous bills have been.

We all know our first nations are in very dire straits in many cases. I represent northern Saskatchewan. My constituency has over 100 reserves, probably more than any other constituency in Canada. Many of those first nations are in what can only be described as dire need. They are in incredible poverty. Basic infrastructure such as housing is lacking and conditions are abysmal.

The fact that we are moving forward on some bills such as this is a positive thing as we move toward self-government. For that reason, I am very supportive of the bill. It is a sectoral self-government initiative but it is a positive move.

I particularly appreciate the voluntary nature of the bill. We had another bill before this House, the First Nations Fiscal and Statistical Management Act, which was a voluntary bill as well. This is a direction in which we might want to continue to move in the future. My party has in our policy book those types of initiatives, voluntary-type bills, that we would introduce in government as well.

In this bill three first nations have signed on thus far. We will probably be able to get into this in more depth in committee. We will be meeting later this afternoon and the minister will be there. We can perhaps ask him additional questions on this. However, does the parliamentary secretary foresee there being more first nations coming on board in the near future or further down the road and what is her view on how we go forward on this?

[An Act to Authorize the Minister of Finance to Make Certain Payments, June 22nd, 2005]

It's not your money. It doesn't belong to you.

[An Act to Authorize the Minister of Finance to Make Certain Payments, June 21st, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, the hon. member for Regina—Qu'Appelle is correct. The leader of the NDP, when he was a council member with the city of Toronto, put forward a bill that would have essentially confiscated every gun in the communities of that area.

If we want to talk about a radical extremist, we can look at the leader of the NDP. The NDP members voted for over $200 million more for the gun registry in Bill C-43 and at the same time the Liberal government is shutting down police stations in rural parts of Saskatchewan. The government shut down a police station in the community of Goodsoil in my riding in northern Saskatchewan. It is pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into the gun registry. It is madness. Where are the priorities?

[An Act to Authorize the Minister of Finance to Make Certain Payments, June 21st, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, Tommy Douglas would be spinning in his grave if he saw the NDP crawling into bed with what is the most criminal and corrupt government in the history of this country.

I will tell members another thing that I find disgraceful. I know the riding that this hon. member represents, which is adjacent to my riding. She represents northern Manitoba; I represent northern Saskatchewan. People in northern Saskatchewan, and I am sure northern Manitoba, think that the gun registry is one of the biggest wastes of money in the history of this country. This hon. member voted for $55 million more for the gun registry.

If people in Flin Flon knew that the member was voting for more money for the gun registry, they would not be very happy. The member thinks that she can sneak this by them, that she can simply vote for more money for the gun registry and they will not notice. Well she has another thing coming because they will know that she voted for more money for the gun registry.

In northern Saskatchewan and northern Manitoba, people do not support Bill C-38, the government's attempt to ram same-sex marriage down the throats of Canadians. The hon. member repeatedly made statements about how she did not support it and her constituents did not support it. What happens? When push comes to shove, the member votes do destroy the traditional definition of marriage.

[An Act to Authorize the Minister of Finance to Make Certain Payments, June 21st, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to rise today on behalf of my constituents of Desnethé—Missinippi—Churchill River in northern Saskatchewan to talk about Bill C-48, the Liberal-NDP budget bill.

This is a bill that was cooked up in a Toronto hotel room late at night by a desperate Prime Minister, an unprincipled leader of the NDP, and Buzz Hargrove. We have seen the result, which is a document of approximately two pages and which I have in my hand. It has three sections to it, two of which are legalese, along with one that is about a quarter of a page long and purports to appropriate $4.6 billion of taxpayers' dollars.

That is $4.6 billion in a quarter of a page, with no accountability, no idea as to how this is going to be distributed and no plan. It is $4.6 billion thrown into a slush fund. We have seen examples of this type of Liberal spending prior to this and it has not resulted in a positive outcome, whether that be the gun registry, the sponsorship scandal or the HRDC boondoggle. We could run down the list.

As I have said, it is a four page bill, two pages of which are actually blank. Will these be filled in later? What is the story with this? Is this where the hidden agenda of the Liberals and the NDP is going to be written into this unholy agreement they came up with?

I firmly believe that this sleazy backroom deal is bad for Canada and bad for Saskatchewan. It is bad for Canada in the sense that the corrupt and criminal Liberal Party has managed to cling to power for at least another few months to squander taxpayers' dollars and fleece Canadians from one end of the country to the other.

This is a bad deal for my home province of Saskatchewan. If the members of the NDP were truly serious about caring about Saskatchewan, this would have been different. We know, however, that the federal NDP does not care at all for Saskatchewan and particularly northern Saskatchewan, because there is nothing in this agreement for agriculture.

We are facing a crisis in agriculture right across the country. Producers in my riding and across Saskatchewan have been incredibly hard hit by frost, weather conditions and BSE. The farmers have been hit very hard and this deal does absolutely nothing for agricultural producers.

Why is that? If we go down the list of priorities that the NDP claims to care about, we will not see one dollar for agriculture in this $4.6 billion agreement. That is an indication of where the New Democrats' priorities lie. Their priorities do not lie with agricultural producers in this country.

I will also tell this House about another place where there is no money: in the deal with the equalization formula. We all know that Saskatchewan is treated more unfairly than probably any other province in the country. Non-renewable natural resources are included in the formula for Saskatchewan. They were recently taken out for Newfoundland and Labrador and Nova Scotia, in the Atlantic accord, an agreement which I fully support and fully agree with. Newfoundland and Labrador and Nova Scotia are now entitled to keep their offshore oil and gas revenue to use for the good of the people of those provinces.

Saskatchewan has not received that same deal. Saskatchewan is being treated unfairly. Every elected politician in my home province except one, who happens to be the finance minister of this country, agrees that the province of Saskatchewan is not being treated fairly.

Under the Conservative proposal, which would remove non-renewable natural resources from the formula, my home province would receive approximately a billion dollars more a year in equalization payments. That would make an incredibly huge difference for people in my province.

There has not been a word about that in this backroom deal cooked up by Buzz Hargrove, the member for Toronto—Danforth and the Prime Minister. There is not one word about any of this.

I want to quote a columnist named Andrew Coyne, who put together a piece the day before the May 19 confidence vote. It is very reflective of the point of view of many individuals from Saskatchewan and from my riding. He wrote:

I had thought the feeling of nausea that washed over me at the news was one of disgust. I now realize it was vertigo. The bottom has fallen out of Canadian politics. There are, quite literally, no rules anymore, no boundaries, no limits. We are staring into an abyss where everything is permissible.

Those exquisites in the press gallery who were so scandalized at the suggestion that the Liberals would stoop to scheduling the budget vote around Darrel Stinson's cancer surgery might now have the decency to admit: of course they would. It should be clear to everyone by now that this government--this prime minister--will go to any length to assure their survival in power. And I do mean any. All governments are loath to leave, all think themselves indispensable, but I cannot recall another that clung to office so desperately, so...hysterically.

The loss of a confidence vote is no longer to be taken as a fundamental loss of democratic legitimacy, but rather as a signal to spend more, threaten louder and otherwise trawl for votes on the opposition benches, for as long as proves necessary.

Indeed, it is an open question whether the Liberals would have even held the budget vote if they hadn't made this deal, or whether they would have promised one if it were not already in the works.

Impossible? Outrageous? But outrage depends upon a sense of where the boundary lines are, and a willingness to call people out when they cross them. The Liberals have been crossing these lines, one after another, for years, and their own conspicuous lack of shame has simply educated the rest of us into shrugging complicity. It's only outrageous until it happens--then we forget we have ever felt otherwise.

For example: Last Wednesday, The Globe and Mail published a stinging editorial calling upon the Liberals to seek an “immediate” vote of confidence, to call an election “now” or to put its budget bill to a “quick” vote.

“With each moment they linger,” the Globe wrote, “they will expose themselves as so desperate to hang on to power that they spit in the face of the Commons and call it respect.”

By Friday, the Liberals were still there, the government had been defeated two more times, the budget vote had not been held--and the Globe wondered what all the commotion was about. “To say the government has lost all legitimacy,” it lectured the opposition, “is a wildly disproportionate response”. Poof: all that outrage, down the memory hole. In two days.

Is it a constitutional crisis if no one understands it is?

A government without the support of a majority of Parliament has spent billions it has no legal authority to spend and dangled offices that are not in its power to bestow, in hopes of recovering that majority.

This is the type of government that the NDP is maintaining in office. It is a government corrupt to the absolute core, a government that cares for nothing except exercising power. It is a government that will lie, cheat and steal, and has, to maintain its hold on power. In short, it is a government that has lost the moral authority to govern our country. The NDP members should be ashamed of themselves.

Here is another issue. Today is national aboriginal day, as members know. I attended a service on behalf of aboriginal veterans from one end of the country to the other, a memorial service to commemorate the contributions of aboriginal war veterans who served in the first world war, the second world war, Korea and peacekeeping missions up to the present day.

This issue is incredibly important to me personally and to constituents in my riding. In my first act as an MP, I put forward a private member's motion that called on the government and the House of Commons to recognize the historical inequality of treatment that aboriginal veterans received when they returned from overseas conflicts. Unfortunately, all but two Liberal members voted against recognizing aboriginal war veterans. There was no reason for them to be voting against that.

Nothing in this deal recognizes the contributions of aboriginal war veterans. Nothing in this deal does anything to live up to Motion No. 193. The government and the NDP should be ashamed of themselves.